Online course Nature based coaching - Lesson 6
Session 4
Enhancing your inner strength
In this lesson we will teach you all you need to know about the 4th session of the coaching trajectory in which we will explore the natural soul qualities of our client.
Again we will start with a written overview of all 9 steps you need to take and we will end this lesson with a video of the live movie recordings of this session. After studying all this material you can do your fourth live practise with your fellow student and/or your 4th session with your try-out client.
The importance of building strength
In the previous session we looked at our fears and how they limit us in realising our desire. It takes courage to move past your fear, to really stand by your truth, because you may encounter pain and rejection. This requires strength and determination. It also requires faith, that these steps will bring you more connection, authenticity and truthfulness. We will build that strength and that confidence in this 4th session.
This is the moment in the trajectory where we change our focus . We no longer bring our attention to our limited psyche, which leads from a place of fear and obstructions, but instead, on that which is so much broader.
Your essential nature is whole and perfect in itself. It’s that silent part in you that has remained untouched throughout your personal history. It’s that pure part within yourself that is able to observe all of your mind’s with gentleness and love.
Your true nature is stable and unchangeable and possesses qualities that you received at your birth. They are unique and all yours. They are qualities that are innately there and which you can always rely on. You may not always be able to tap into them, but they are there!
Symbolic work form:
- Circle of soul qualities
In this session we invite our client to make a circle of soul qualities. We’ll be looking at how they can increase their inner strength when they are more in touch with their own soul qualities and with the natural resources that they can always build on.
The strong element here is to invite the client to stand in the middle of the circle and to fully own all their qualities. Again: by including the body, there will be a deep anchoring of what is being experienced.
Start of session 4
Step 1: Walking meditation
Step 2: Recall most important insights of the previous session
Always start the session by asking how the previous session affected them.
- How did it go afterwards?
- What are the most important insights you remember?
- Are there any questions at this moment?
Step 3: Invitation to make a circle of soul qualities
Ask your client to use materials from nature and turn them into a circle of their soul’s natural qualities. The circle should be large enough for them to stand in the middle.
Note: Natural qualities (or soul qualities) particularly are the qualities that you naturally embody. Not so much through what you have learned, but rather what makes you unique. They are often things that are very easy for you to do.
Step 4: Discussing the circle of qualities
Together you’re going to stand outside the circle. The coach asks the following questions:
- What are your unique qualities?
- How are they visible in your life?
- Which qualities need extra attention?
- How are you going to ensure that?
- How would you like to to express more of yourself in the world with these unique qualities?
- How are you going to do that in practical terms?
- How does this help realise your wish?
Points of focus:
- Sometimes it happens that a client can only come up with 2 or 3 qualities. Or maybe not even one. Then ask about work experiences. What made you suitable for your job instead of someone else? Or what are some typical behaviours that belong to you and that are different from your friends or colleagues? What qualities do you show in your role as a mother? What does your partner specifically value in you? This type of question often helps to "uncover" the qualities.
- Sometimes you can also distinguish multiple qualities within one quality. Make sure to find separate symbols for these.
- Perhaps as a coach you have noticed a quality in the past sessions that’s not represented in the circle. You can mention these and ask the client whether they recognise If this is the case, let them add this quality to the circle
Step 5: Repeat and summarise insights
Step 6: Include feeling
Step 7: Connect back to the wish
- What qualities can help you realise your wish?
- And again: mention what that wish stands for.
- What qualities need more attention?
- And how are you going to ensure that?
Step 8: Appropriating your qualities
- Now ask the client to take place in the middle of the circle. Invite the client to become silent and to direct their attention to each element and to “appropriate” all those qualities. Be quiet now and explicitly DON’T start asking questions.
- Next, you as a coach now also start to, very calmly and with care, go past all the elements and name them 1 by 1, confirming that all these qualities belong to your client. This is what you naturally carry with you and what you can always trust upon.
- Make sure to speak calmly. Above all, don’t try to present it with the intention to uplift or boost. It’s about a truth that is completely obvious. The invitation to the client is to receive it as such. Like a nice warm shower.
- Finally you ask: Can you fully own these qualities? How does this feel?
Attention
After this, don’t ask further questions or talk further. Give the client all the needed time and silence to it sink in.
Step 9: Summarize the highlights of this session during your walk back.
Optional exercise
An endless source of possibilities
When we are in touch with our authentic self, we’re connected to an endless source of possibilities. Discuss with your client how their life would change if they were to be in contact with their source more often. Try to make this as specific as possible:
- Would you be doing the same work?
- What would you be doing more/less often?
- What would you perhaps no longer do?
- What would be new in your life?
- What changes in your relationships with others?
- And what does this mean for the realisation of your wish?
You can discuss these questions as you walk, or you can give them as 'homework'.
